A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

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Cato Unbound: Mental Health and the Law

We have lately witnessed several high-profile criminal events for which insanity may or may not be a tempting explanation. To name only the most prominent, consider the spree killings in Aurora, Colorado and Oak Creek, Wisconsin; Anders Breivik’s rampage in Norway; and the shooting of former representative Gabrielle Giffords and a group of her constituents. Giffords’ shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was medicated against his will for nearly a year and recently entered a guilty plea. Anders Breivik has denied the suggestion that he was mentally ill, insisting that he is of sound mind and motivated only by ideology.

At Cato Unbound this month, we’re taking a close look at mental health and the law. American University’s Dr. Jeffrey A. Schaler is skeptical that “insanity” is a good explanation for criminal—or any—behavior. Indeed, Schaler denies that “mental illness” is a valid category of disease. For that reason he is also one of the world’s foremost exponents of consensual psychiatry, a branch of the discipline first comprehensively defended by Dr. Thomas Szasz: if a patient wishes to be treated, he should be allowed to seek treatment; if not, his behavior remains his own responsibility.

Jacob Sullum, a journalist and author who has often written on mental health, therapy, and the law, points out that psychiatry can’t have things both ways—either a criminal is responsible for his actions, in which case he should be punished; or the criminal is not responsible for his actions, in which case one might argue for involuntary treatment. Yet current laws, particularly regarding sexually violent predators, often try to do both to the same person.

Amanda Pustilnik, an associate professor of law at the University of Maryland, argues that the outrage about coercive psychiatry is misplaced: more mentally ill people inhabit our prison system than are to be found in our psychiatric hospitals. They get there not because they are more criminal, but because they are less cooperative with police, worse at defending themselves in court, and find it difficult to comply with the rules of prison life and parole. Many of these people would prefer to be in mental institutions, where they would receive the treatment they both need and want.

The conversation will remain open through the end of the month, so be sure to subscribe via RSS or follow us on Twitter. We welcome readers’ letters and may publish them at our option; send them to J Kuznicki (at) cato . org.